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AL 101, 9th of Uror, The Giant Outpost
AL 101 Elven calendar - high elf/woodelf year starts in the spring and goes to fall, darkelf year is the latter half. We just celebrated new year for the high/wood elves. It is the 9th of Uror. We planned to leave the goggles with Velma in a locked box in case anyone should need it and I was off on a mission of my own. The weather was murky when we started out, but it cleared up. The fishermen took us to the cave, which was our chosen destination. I requested the eye to open the cave. It looked at me vaguely, then water from the river rushed into the cave. Only Klo managed to keep his footing, Lorem & I were flung far away into the air. I grabbed a rope out of my backpack and threw it to Lorem, who caught it, so at the very least we were in this storm together. Klotar too eventually succumbed to the the storms as well. We threw a rope to Klotar and managed to secure ourselves to each other, even though we seemed to be careening counter clockwise. Looking up at the sky we didn't see bridges like times before, but we somehow determined that the winds were carrying us southeast. While we decided what to do about getting through the wall around the eye of the thunder we noticed serpents floating above and below us that seemed to be shooting lightning bolts. I cast thunderwave on Lorem who used a spell to absorb half the damage and we made it to safety in the eye of the thunder. Above us the great Dunia. With no updrafts to keep us in the air, we sank to the ground, landing in cold snow up to our knees. We were clearly on a mountaintop, the air was thin and it was snowing lightly. All around us were mountains. In one direction it looked like fewer mountains. In another direction was a castle-like structure. It was rough terrain, but we moved toward the structure. At one point Lorem broke through the ice and almost fell hurtling into a crevasse, but we pulled him free and helped him out. We neared the castle - everything looked humongous - the main tower stretching up like 200ft into the sky. Walls were 40 feet. There appeared to be a drawbridge easily twice as tall and wide as would be expected. The drawbridge, to our luck, was down. We stealthily rushed toward the castle. We detected a massive humanoid creature (about 20 ft tall) exiting the castle. I made a noise, but quickly cast invisibility so it luckily lost interest and went off on its merry way. There were three structures, a large keep with a smaller single storey structure behind it, then another single storey structure not attached as well. The guard station seemed to be unmanned. We entered the structure. The layout was rectangular with giant steps (each about as tall as Lorem) leading up to a second level with 4 columns at the corners, where presumably archers would be stationed. We could hear animal sounds coming from the smaller structure not attached. So we went toward the attached structure. A wave of heat emanated from what appeared to be a furnace oven or stove, which apparently was what this room was. Lorem and Klotar hid behind giant urns and utensil shelves and I went in to scout out what was going on. A giant carrying a torch was heading in our direction. I slipped past and turned to send a message that a giant was coming their way. Lorem slipped into an urn that was filled with grease up to his waist. Klotar likewise slipped into an urn with slightly more rancid urn. The giant noticed the door was open. Lorem cast a minor illusion snake to try and distract it - but as I mentioned on a previous adventure, that only ever works in books. I tried to get past and bumped into a wessel, unfortunately. We entered combat dun...dun...dunia... Lorem emerged from the urn. Klo didn't quite make it. I hid. The giant roughed Lorem up pretty bad. We somehow managed to run down the stairs inside the castle where there was a console thingy. Lorem keyed in the code from the ruins. The giant entered the room and looked around for us. Klotar and I distracted the giant long enough for Lorem to input the code which ended up creating the portal on a disc that was facing the floor. Klo heaved the portal stone as far as he could while the giant killed me. Lorem grabbed my prone body, deftly dove, sliding into the portal. No doubt, he was aided by the cooking grease from the urn. Klotar made it through but his boots did not. In a stroke of genius luck, I seemed to have been revived while passing through the portal, and we found ourselves in the spider cave. We rushed out of the cave, luckily remembering the way out. We reached the river and meandered back to the outpost, living to see another day.